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A repeated measures design was carried out in which 52 Psychology based students (K) were required to complete 3 online surveys. The surveys were devised using Ramset and John’s Big Five (2007), Liability Social Anxiety Scale (1999) and Ray’s achievement motivation survey (1979). There is a statistically significant negative effect of extroversion on social anxiety and no significant link of need for achievement on their social anxiety. There was no link at all between extroversion and an individual’s achievement motivation.
It can be concluded that extroversion has an effect on social anxiety whereas the need for achievement does not. Introduction: A persons’ behavior is the core for all psychological research, whether it be individually or observing a group. It has been said that personality plays a big part in the way humans behave, think and interact (Laptop, 1937). Costa and McCrae (1985) developed a model that indicated the main five aspects of an individual’s personality, The Big Five. The Big Five suggests the main five characteristics of someone’s personality are: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness and Neurotics.
Extroversion, made popular by Carl Jung (1921 is the trait that someone who is outgoing, talkative and energetic would possess (Thompson, 2008). In 2007, Ramset and John developed a hardened version of the original Big Five questionnaire, taking the items down to 10 rather than 44. Maroon-Gained, Watson and Maroon (2009) have shown that there is a strong link between extroversion and social anxiety, either way, meaning that if someone is more extrovert they lacked social anxiety and if they were less extrovert (introvert) they had higher ratings of social anxiety.
Social anxiety can be defined in many ways, but the most widely used is an individual experiencing feelings of discomfort, fear or worry that is centered on human interactions (Antonym & Swanson, 2008). Being socially accepted can also be a big fear for those struggling with social anxiety (Amines, Gelded & Shaw, 1 983) and being socially accepted also pushes people to strive for achievement (Ray, 1979). In 1979, Ray carried out a study into humans need for achievement, investigating how high levels of motivation to achieve was and why.
Ray found that individuals within the British culture had similar levels of achievement motivation whereas those in South Africa were significantly higher. There are currently no easily accessible studies into the connection between a person’s need for achievement ND their social anxiety leaving a gap this study aims to fill. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether there is a connection between a person’s extroversion, need for achievement and social anxiety.
If the results match the hypothesis it could lead to social anxiety being determined a lot quicker therefore pushing for people to approach socially anxious individuals gently, and enable those struggling with anxiety to understand why they feel the way they do which could in turn lead to them overcoming their fears. The prediction for the outcome is that an individual with a higher need for achievement will be ore socially anxious and those who are more extrovert will lack social anxiety. Method: Participants: 52 students studying Psychology and Sports Psychology at the University of Chester were used.
Aged between 18 and 40 (M-20. 9). There were 29 females and 23 males. Participants are all students at the University of Chester from all over the J, although 6 participants were not originally from, born or grew up in England (other countries such as Belgium, Nigeria, Gibraltar, Nepal and Guernsey). Materials: In order to carry out this experiment, each participant was allocated a computer o partake in the online surveys. SPAS v. 20 was used to analyses the data. Procedure: The study took place in a room located in the Bishop Otter campus of the University of Chester in West Sussex.
The participants completed all online questionnaires in a time slot that they would usually have been taking part in a weekly educational workshop, making this a repeated measures design. The participants were asked to complete three different questionnaires, over the period of three weeks. Each questionnaire was specific to a topic we are looking at; Social Anxiety (Liability et a’, 1999) including questions related to social interaction and performance anxiety such as “Giving a party’ and “Acting, performing, or speaking in front of an audience”.
When taking part in the social anxiety survey individuals were asked to respond to 24 questions, each requiring them to state how often they avoid a certain behavior and how much they fear partaking in said behavior using a scale running from O to 3 (O being none and 3 being severe). An individuals need for achievement (Ray, 1979) asking questions such as “Are you satisfied to be no better than most other people at your job? “.
When the individuals were completing the questionnaire referring to their need for achievement the participants were required to answer fourteen questions simply in the form of “Yes” scoring 3, 2″ scoring 2 and “No” scoring 1. And a shortened version of Costa and Massacre’s Big Five (1985) survey developed by Ramset and John (2007) which consisted of 12 statements linked to extroversion like ‘tend to be quiet” and “Has an assertive personality” in which they were required to respond using a scale from 1-5 (l=disagree strongly and 5=agree strongly).
The participants were required to give their student ID every mime they completed a survey in order to keep the data organized so that a participants response could be kept together to be compared and this also allowed them to stay anonymous as no names were given. Once the responses were gathered, they were entered into SPAS with each participant being assigned their own row so that their individual responses were linked allowing their data to be compared against themselves.
Before being able to carry out the main analysis, it was vital that a correlation was run for social anxiety making sure that the two subsections (performance anxiety and social interaction) were strongly related so that the social anxiety could be viewed as a whole. The correlation results indicated that a significantly strong correlation was present (r=. 848, n=52, p<. this allows the social anxiety survey responses to be viewed as a whole. before completing online surveys all participants were informed of intent and asked give full consent. align="justify">They were presented with the opportunity throughout that enabled them to discontinue their participation and were debriefed after finishing the final questions. Results: Multiple regressions Variable Mean Effectiveness Extroversion . 96 p=. 005 Need for achievement 1 . 36 Figure 1: table showing the means and significance of the effects of the independent variables. A multiple regression was run to predict social anxiety (M=43) from an individuals need for achievement (M=1. 36) and their extroversion (M=2. 96). 17. % of the variability on social anxiety is due to the independent variables. An individual’s extroversion showed a significant effect, P<. but the participants need for achievement did not p>. 05 (p=. 778). F (2, 51) =5. 134, P<. r2="." the results report that when score of social anxiety increased by he need for achievement scored but extroversion decreased correlations pearson correlation significance vs. . ooo align="justify">Extroversion -. 314 . 012 Figure 2: table showing the correlation and the significance between each variable. A Person’s correlation was also run to determine the relationship between social anxiety and extroversion. There was a reasonably strong negative correlation between the two, which was also statistically significant (r=-. 415, n=52, p>. 005). There was no significant relationship between the need for achievement and social anxiety, p=. 242. There was a significant negative relationship between need for achievement and extroversion (r=-. 314, n=52, p<. align="justify">Discussion: The findings of this investigation show that only a small percentage of the variations on the dependent variable (social anxiety) are due to the independent variables. With this being said, the multiple regressions and correlations show that there is a significantly strong negative relationship between social anxiety and extroversion. As a persons’ extroversion increased their social anxiety decreased. There was only a slight positive correlation between the need for achievement and social anxiety, but it was insignificant. It can be concluded that this relationship could have been due to chance.
These findings both support the hypothesis. As stated before, the predicted outcome was that there would be a significant negative relationship between social anxiety and extroversion, which has been supported. But the effect of need for achievement on social anxiety was not significant enough to support the hypothesis that those with a higher need for achievement will have higher levels of social anxiety. Maroon-Gained et al. ‘s endings (2009) were similar to those found in the current study that show the strong negative relationship between social anxiety and extroversion.
This can lead to the conclusion that a persons’ levels of social anxiety are directly linked to their extrovert traits. This could be due to extroverts characteristics making an individual more confident making it easier for them to not be concerned with being socially accepted as they are comfortable with themselves, therefore not searching for the approval of the surrounding population. The little evidence found that there is a link between the participants need for achievement ND their self-reported social anxiety argue with the ideas of Ray (1979) and Amines et al. (1983).
Between the theories of these two studies, it was said that a person who suffers with social anxiety is craving to be socially accepted so therefore have a higher achievement motivation, the current study shows that this is not the case. The results found only show a small link between these two variables, which contradicts the arguments made by both Amines et al. (1983) and Ray (1979). The reason need for achievement and social anxiety don’t have a strong relationship could be due to the participants used, all participants were dents. It could be assumed that all participants experience the same need for achievement.
So using the means for these variables may have not been the best process for investigating the significant differences that could have been found if each participant was investigated individually. When completing this study, as it states in the method, only university students were used. This causes the problem of generalizations to arise, because all participants are living in the same part of the ELK, are all similar ages and are also partaking in similar everyday activities (university classes, assignments etc. , this is a very ethnocentric study.
It could be argued that the results may have been different if the study was carried out on people living more competitive lifestyles, in different areas. A cause and effect explanation is very difficult to devise when using a regression and a correlation. These tests only show what kind of relationship is present not necessarily why it occurred. A t-test may have been more suitable for analyzing these results. It could be argued that the overall study is invalid. The research question was aimed to investigate the effect of extroversion and need for achievement on social anxiety.